Churches Do Fair Share in Community

* In “Pastors Sing Praises of Industrial Park Churches” (April 13), Millie Summerlin, Garden Grove’s planning services manager, stated that having churches in industrial parks is bad for business and puts a drain on the services that the city can provide because of the churches’ tax-free status.

Summerlin seemingly does not understand that churches are a community service, saying, “If large amounts of commercial space are converted to church use, it harms our ability to support community services.” The fact is, churches provide not only the obvious spiritual benefits, but also such services as counseling, food and financial assistance to needy people, recreation for children and youth, family activities and social activities, including support groups for those with special needs.

Churches provide employment, a forum for discussion of the issues concerning society, an important element of education, and a place where people come to exercise their freedom of religion. They frequently offer day care or preschool, both of which provide local employment. Most of these benefits are provided to the local congregation, the very people Summerlin believes would suffer from the lack of taxes.

Churches require far less policing than retail outlets, bars, liquor stores, food stores or restaurants. They generate traffic only when other traffic is at a minimum. To attempt to keep these churches from locating wherever they want is probably a violation of their members’ constitutional right to freedom of religion. I believe that the reason the drafters of the Constitution provided for separation of church and state was more to protect the church from the Garden Groves of this world than to prevent things like school prayer.

Churches may not pay as much in taxes as the businesses the Garden Grove politicians fear may not locate in the industrial parks because of the presence of churches, but they clearly provide a lot more in services than these same politicians could buy with the taxes from a liquor store or whatever other type business they seem to think a church would chase away.TED G. SHOWN

Mission Viejo